


in this white house

by myconstant



Category: Football RPF
Genre: Futbal Mini-Bang, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-08
Updated: 2015-09-08
Packaged: 2018-04-19 17:10:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,625
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4754447
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/myconstant/pseuds/myconstant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Raúl and Guti share the Real Madrid presidency, among other things.</p>
            </blockquote>





	in this white house

**Author's Note:**

> This is ridiculous! And for futbal minibang round four. Huge huge thanks to my challenge partner [daughterofkings](http://archiveofourown.org/users/DaughterOfKings) for providing the art (it's excellent and adorable! see below!) accompanying the fic and the encouragement. Big thanks as well to dld_ftw for the super-speedy beta and triestinetheory, whose fault this mostly is.

 

 

It’s only breaking and entering if you haven’t known the groundskeeper since you were eight - or at least this is what Guti tells him.

“I’ve only known him since I was fifteen,” Raúl points out, warming up on the touchline.

“Then you’re trespassing,” Guti replies matter-of-factly, kicking idly at the ball by his feet. Around them the stadium is dark and empty.

“That sounds serious.”

“But luckily,” Guti says, elbowing Raúl in the ribs with a smirk that hasn’t changed in the twenty-something years they've known each other, “you’re with me.”

Raúl thinks with amusement that this might be the best summary of their presidency he’s ever heard. He watches as Guti dribbles the ball into midfield, each touch an echo, and shoots.

 

 

 

 

The first team lose 2-0 away at Rayo. Raúl calls Guti from outside of Vallecas.

“That was poor,” Raúl says.

“We played like shit,” Guti agrees. From across the line, Raúl can hear the rustling of paper and scissors. There is also a three-year-old singing something that sounds like happy birthday. As a father five-times over, it is a tune that Raúl is already very familiar with.

“Is that Enzo practicing for Romina?” he asks, unable not to smile.

“It is, and while the maestro is serenading us, we’re trying to wrap these birthday presents before mama gets home, which should be - five minutes ago. _Let's just give up on the wrapping, no?_ ” he hears Guti tell his kids. “ _There’s no point in trying to surprise her, the lady knows more than god._ ”

The loud chorus of _Noooooo_ that follows is audible across the line. Raúl laughs.

"You're a good dad," he says.

“Th - _ay! not the scissors_ \- thanks, Raúl.”

Raúl is still smiling when they hang up later.

 

 

 

 

By now, he and Guti have been co-presidents for one year.

It starts as a PR exercise disguised as sentiment. A limited-edition interim fix until the club can elect a suit with the lofty prerequisites for candidacy, namely a hundred million euros to spare in cash, who also genuinely enjoys football.

It would also be ideal if this person could be trusted to not be apprehended by the authorities for driving a backhoe backwards down a major highway after stalled negotiations concerning the renovations of a certain football stadium, all the while raving about building the Abu Dhabi Bernabéu in Barcelona. Or however that last one had happened.

Raúl sometimes asks himself if such person actually exists. Guti asks the same question, except much more loudly.

And it is temporary. Temporary, until it becomes permanent.

 

 

 

 

Jesé Rodríguez barges into their office about once a week. If Raúl is particularly unlucky, twice a week. 

The first time, Raúl is just back from a round of meetings in Asia. He’s hanging up the phone, exhausted and ready for quality in-his-own-bed sleep, when Jesé swings through the door without knocking, nearly tipping over a beloved potted plant in the process.

“Tío,” Jesé says. “I’ve got the best idea.”

“What is it?” Raúl asks, barely suppressing a yawn. His body still thinks it’s in Jakarta.

“You’re gonna love it,” Jesé promises, producing a pair of headphones from out of nowhere. “Listen.”

Raúl frowns. “What is that?”

“ _Listen._ ”

And Raúl does. Or rather, he tries. He gives it about twenty seconds before pulling one of the headphones away from his ear. “What is this?” 

“It’s the hymn,” Jesé says, obviously proud. “I dropped a verse and mixed it.”

“Of course,” Raúl says over the deafening electro-noise.

“It’s not finished,” Jesé explains, “but it’s going to blow everybody away. Trust.”

As it goes, Raúl has a variation of this conversation once (or twice) a week. He’s still not sure how to tell Jesé that _cabrón_ and _el Calderón_ don’t have enough syllables to really rhyme.

 

 

 

 

Raúl almost turns the job down.

He knows a lot about football. He knows how to manage a pitch and motivate a dressing room. He knows how to overcome the expectations, both everyone else’s and his own.

He does not know a lot about the day-to-day operations of a club. He does not know how to navigate through bureaucratic red tape or cut the biggest deals. He does remember a little bit about assets and liabilities from high school accounting, but is also pretty sure that he'd fail the exam tomorrow.

Raúl almost turns the job down because it seems like the right thing to do. Because he’s a player and not a suit, because he’s never worked at a desk and never wanted to, because he’s always avoided the management-side and the politics of how to play and what to say.

But Raúl knows Madrid and he knows Guti.

It’s kind of funny how those two things make him say yes.

 

 

 

 

In addition to sharing the same job, Guti is also Raúl’s ride to work.

They live in the same neighborhood and it's always been a thing that they've done, even when they were teenagers and Guti would drive them to training despite being three years too young for a driver's license.

Sergio particularly loves it. He whistles loudly and suggestively when Guti and Raúl get out of the same car in the morning and his grin only widens when Guti threatens to sell him.

The media have a field day with it too. _¡El Secreto!_ the sports pages read. _Co-Presidentes Meet in Car to Discuss Sale of Entire Team to Shakhtar Donetsk_.

Sometimes Raúl thinks the papers might be onto something.

 

 

 

 

“What’s this about hot chocolate?”

Raúl glances up from his computer monitor. Guti is leaning in the open door between their adjoining offices with his arms crossed, nose scrunched.

“What hot chocolate?” Raúl asks, turning his attention back to the screen. He's reviewing a sponsorship contract that is about five minutes away from being very late.

Guti huffs. “The hot chocolate that you promised the canteranos.”

Raúl frowns. “I did nothing of the sort.”

“The mobsters in pre-benjamín say that you did.”

“Six-year-olds say a lot of things. I've heard all the stories about you.”

Guti groans in exasperation. “Raúl, don’t fuck with this.”

“Listen,” Raúl says, squinting down to double-check the file format. “If this doesn’t get sent off in the next ten seconds, we’re going to be in a lot more trouble than if the kids don’t get hot chocolate. Now, I’m going to send this and - ”

“Wait, wait, wait,” Guti says, leaning in over his shoulder. “Let me check it. I told the board I would help you write better email.”

Raúl sighs and lets him. Guti adds a comma, fixes a typo, and exchanges _Sincerely_ for _VAMOSSS_.

“That’s better,” he says before hitting send.

 

 

 

 

Their first co-presidential crisis happens only a week in. Later, Raúl will think that he should have seen it coming.

Iker knocks before he enters and then places his goalkeeping gloves down on the long meeting table. It’s a specific gesture, the meaning immediately clear.

Raúl frowns. Guti groans.

“Can you believe this?” he asks Raúl. “It’s not even noon and already someone’s trying to piss me off.”

Iker clears his throat. Raúl glances back at him.

“What can we help you with?” he asks, gesturing for Iker to sit.

“I want to talk about an exit,” Iker says steadily, still standing.

“An exit?” Guti echoes.

“An exit,” Iker confirms, tucking his hands into his pockets.

“So you want to leave?” Raúl asks and Iker looks away from Guti, who is now holding a piece of paper that reads _I QUIT_ in messy blue ink. Raúl sees Iker bite down on his lip to suppress the hint of a smile.

“Of course not,” Iker says, “but if the club - ”

Raúl picks up the gloves and hands them back. Iker swats Guti’s head with them on his way out the door.

 

 

 

 

Raúl knows that it shouldn’t work.

“Fuck,” Guti says after the fifth consecutive meeting on their first day. Raúl’s tie has been off for hours. “Who would even want to do this by themselves? Someone get us a new sporting director before I wilt.”

It shouldn’t work, but somehow it does.

 

 

 

 

Except for when it doesn’t.

“He keeps _stealing my spot_ ,” Iker snaps through his car window. It’s eight o’clock in the morning in what is quickly becoming Raúl’s least favorite place in the whole of la Ciudad: the parking garage.

“Zizou's in mine,” Guti says with a shrug as he locks up his car. He flips the key-ring around his finger. “Early birds, Casillas.”

Iker growls and lays on his horn.

“I did miss 2005,” Sergio says happily. Raúl did too, except maybe just not this.

 

 

 

 

It takes him a few weeks, but eventually Raúl figures it out. Jesé must simply not know how to knock.

It’s the only plausible explanation because Raúl’s on a very, very important call, the door’s properly closed, and there’s an actual sign posted outside his office that says _BICHITO, I'm On The Phone_. None of this stops Jesé from reeling in, large potted plant barely avoided, and excitedly announcing that he’s had a moment of major divine creative inspiration while wiping the floor with Dani’s ass in PlayStation.

“Raúl, it’s the biggest thing you’ve ever heard. Huge.”

Raúl reaches for the closest piece of paper, crumples it up into a small air-dynamic ball, and throws. Jesé misses the point and heads it into a rubbish bin.

“I’ll come back later,” he promises before swinging back out the door. “I can do it for you freestyle - you know, make it fresh."

“I actually don’t know,” Raúl shouts after him. He doesn't remember until too late to mute his speakerphone.

 

 

 

 

Between the two of them, they split the job on the day-to-day, but it’s Guti who reigns on twitter.

He christens the change of official account management by promptly starting shit with Barca and then immediately blocking them. Raúl, technologically backward and secretly a little proud of it, only knows this because the press always bring it up as a shining example of their visionary leadership and because Guti sometimes throws his phone across the room for seemingly no reason.

“What are you doing?” Raúl asks him one evening. Their plane is taxiing in Dubai. Guti is typing furiously on his phone.

“The fans want to know your opinion on cucumbers,” he says without looking up.

Raúl looks away from the window, slightly baffled and more than a little concerned. He doesn't like cucumbers.

“Do they really?” 

“Raúl, please. They’ve known for years. I’m feuding with Chelsea.”

Raúl tilts his head at this. “Why are you feuding with Chelsea?” he asks, curious.

Guti huffs impatiently. “ _Everyone_ should be feuding with Chelsea.”

“I’m not feuding with Chelsea,” Raúl says. “I want to beat Chelsea.”

Guti looks up from his phone and grins, nudging at his arm over the plane armrest. “Not all of us are as noble as you, Raúl.”

 

 

 

 

Guti almost turns the job down.

Raúl knows this because Guti shows up on his doorstep at two o’clock in the morning with an unsigned contract in his hand and dark circles under his eyes.

“Raúl,” Guti sighs and Raúl’s stomach drops.

“They’ve got a wager at the Camp Nou,” he replies quickly, remembering a conversation from earlier in the day. “50,000 euros.”

Guti shrugs, but his eyes are narrowed in a way that they weren’t before. “On what?”

“That we’re out by Tuesday.”

And then Guti asks for a pen and signs the papers right fucking there.

 

 

 

 

They hold a lot of press conferences together and during each one there’s a voice in the back of Raúl’s head saying - _this is it_.

This is the press conference where some guy with glasses and a tape recorder is going to stand up and ask about that thing that happened when they were teenagers during the summer of 1998, about winning the Champions League and getting a little too drunk afterwards, about how in a moment of what Raúl has always assumed to be blackout impulse, Guti had kissed him in a dark side street near their hotel and Raúl, for some hazy reason still unknown to this day, hadn't kissed back. And could any of these details be confirmed, please?

So far, no one’s asked. Raúl still sometimes thinks about it though.

 

 

 

 

Hierro once tried to explain to him that the older you get, the less you understand. At the time, Raúl had been eighteen or nineteen or twenty-five and hadn’t believed that could be possible. Increasingly, however, he is starting to agree.

For example, Raúl would imagine that one of the most promising young players of the game, the so-called Future of Spain, would be rather committed to behaving well at his first major awards ceremony.

Raúl would also be totally wrong. In the middle of the Ballon d’Or gala, Isco turns around in his seat and pokes Raúl's knee.

“Pssst. _Raúl._ ”

Raúl himself finds this a little redundant seeing as he’s sitting in the seat directly behind Isco and therefore had a very clear view of him turning around. Raúl also supposes that this is probably among of the least of his soon-to-be current problems.

“When’s it going to happen?” Isco asks.

“When’s what going to happen?”

“ _You know._ ”

Raúl sighs and it echoes around the auditorium. “I promise you I don’t.”

“Raúlito,” Guti whispers from next to him, “ _behave_.” 

“The thing,” Isco insists, poking at Raúl’s leg again.

“ _What thing?_ ”

Up in the front row, Cristiano turns around in his chair, the universal expression for _oh god, not this not now_ clear on his face.

“Oh, is it a surprise?” Isco asks excitedly, ignoring Cristiano, the ceremony, the fact that they are the only two people in the entire audience speaking. “I love surprises. You’re not leaving the first team out of it though. I love hot chocolate more than my mother.”

Carvajal rolls his eyes at this and whacks Isco on the head with his paper program.

“More than Dani’s too,” Isco mutters.

So it must be true then. Raúl understands very little.

 

 

 

 

The details are vague and dubious, but somehow their names show up on the call-up sheet for the clásico, right there at the very bottom after the medical staff. Raúl’s not sure how Guti maneuvers this Assistants to the Assistant Kitman arrangement, but he doubts that he really wants to know.

He also doubts that he’s ever been so happy to sit on the bench.

They must, however, swear up and down to everyone – to the board, to the manager, to the team – that they will act properly in their new temporarily roles. When Guti refuses to suffer the insult, Raul just goes ahead and does it for both of them instead because he knows that it will be fine.

And it is fine. For about fifteen minutes.

When their visitors hit the post in the sixteenth minute, Raúl begins to think about whether or not the board would ever consider looking into a player-president model. He also notices Guti’s knee bouncing up and down.

Five minutes later, Raúl thinks that the whole part-time president part-time player thing is a long-shot, but maybe not totally impossible and maybe it could even start this game, this minute, this second? It’s also both of Guti's knees now.

Ten minutes later, Raúl isn’t thinking of anything because Guti is up and out of his seat, charging down the touchline. Raúl lunges to barely grab his wrist.

“What are you doing?” Raúl asks.

Guti glares at him and oh, Raúl _knows_. 

“Are you trying to sub yourself on?” he hisses. 

“No,” Guti hisses back, clearly very insulted. He pulls hard against Raúl’s hand, like he knows that Raúl’s instinct will always be to give.

“You are,” Raúl says, disbelieving but somehow one-hundred-percent certain. Never mind the fact that Raúl had just been contemplating the exact same thing earlier. “You’re trying to sub yourself on.”

“That’s stupid.”

“Then what are you doing?”

“Going on a walk." 

“A walk,” Raúl repeats incredulously, brows raised and praying to whatever god there may be that the network cameras don't find them.

Guti, however, is still glaring at him. Raúl’s hand is still clasped around his wrist.

“ _Chema_ ,” Raúl says beneath the growing swell of noise in the stadium.

Guti scowls and again, Raúl just knows.

“ _Fine_ ,” he fumes, dropping back into his seat as Raúl finally lets go. “Fine. Congratufuckinglations, Raúl. Look at the score, everyone’s playing like s- ”

Whatever else Guti means to say is cut off there because the ball swishes off Cristiano’s boot and far back into the nets.

(“You know that first goal would have come faster,” Guti says later from up in the stands.

Raúl lowers his head to hide his smile.)

 

 

 

 

Contrary to what they sometimes like to claim in the papers, Guti doesn’t drive fast anymore. His desk is lined with family photos from vacations in Greece and holidays at home, and Raúl hasn’t seen him drink in at least a year.

But sometimes at the end of the day or in the middle of a meeting, Guti will look at him with this strange expression, like he can’t believe that he hasn’t lit a fire to everything yet, that he hasn’t put it all to the torch. And any moment now.

“It won’t happen,” Raúl says, promises. And then, softer, “I’ll drive home.”

Guti doesn’t say anything when he hands Raúl the keys. Raúl links their fingers together and takes his time before letting go.

 

 

 

 

A reporter catches him on his mobile between meetings. Raúl immediately regrets picking up.

“Mr. González, can you confirm any details about - ” 

_why you didn’t reciprocate when everyone knows that you should have?_

“ - your rapidly deteriorating professional relationship with players in the youth academy?”

Raúl stares at his phone and then declines to comment.

 

 

 

 

It is possible, he thinks up late at night in bed, that he could have said something about it at one point in time.

Yes, it’s very possible. In fact, he can even imagine the exact circumstances.

Standing on the side at one of the pre-benjamín scrimmages sometime before Christmas, it is absolutely possible that one of the little kids in a kit three sizes too big could have come up to him while he was talking about something or other with the coaching staff and pulled on Raúl’s sleeve and asked him for -

Of course. 

Raúl would still point out that there is a distinct difference between _We’ll have to ask your mama_ and _of course, kid, hot cocoa for anyone who’s ever played for Real Madrid_ , but Raúl also - despite what his own children like to claim - remembers the hardships of being seven.

“I’ll fix it,” he says aloud.

 

 

 

 

Someone slides a CD under Raúl’s office door, the plastic case flimsy and neon pink.

He has a hard time with the sloppy handwriting on the side (FÁBRICA TUNEZ Vol. MMXVI? Surely not.) and puts it aside on his desk for later investigation. It goes missing the next day, but he doesn’t notice.

 

 

 

 

At around five o’clock, Raúl goes down to the training grounds. Fifteen minutes later, he climbs into Guti’s car and slams the door behind him.

“That bad?” Guti asks, leaning back to look over his shoulder as he backs out of Iker’s spot.

“Worse.” Raúl rubs a hand down his face as he sinks into the passenger seat. “I should have gone sooner.”

“What’s up?”

“Hugo won’t speak to me without his agent,” Raúl says, closing his eyes. “He’s seven.”

“Damn.”

“Álvaro’s threatening a move to Manchester United. He’s _six._ ”

Guti laughs and laughs. By the time he stops, Raúl’s laughing too.

(“We’ll fix it,” Guti says as he pulls up in front of Raúl's house.

“We’ll fix it,” Raúl agrees.)

 

 

 

 

One of the many reasons why Mamen is Raúl’s best friend is her tendency to get straight to the point, to what’s most important.

She skips _how was your day_ and _is there anything you want to talk about_ when he comes home late.

“Do you love it, Raúl?” she asks instead.

Raúl leans against the kitchen counter and thinks. Thinks about doing keepy-uppys during morning in the corporate hallways because his copresidente insists that they help spur the brain, about bellowing the old chants from the presidential box, their voices both raspy and shot; about Guti leaning in close over his shoulder to quickly spot the rogue comma that should be a semi-colon.

“It’s kind of funny,” he says like he's never realized it before. “Somehow I do.”

 

 

 

 

Because it has to end somewhere, there’s hot chocolate and football on the pitch at the Bernabéu on an empty Thursday night.

Raúl tries to referee a game of five-on-twenty, but ends up inserting himself into live play, club board be damned, because Isco and Jesé start picking up and carrying around the six-year-old defenders instead of navigating around them and Raúl doesn’t think that’s quite fair. He and the under-eights lose by a wide, wide margin, but afterwards, when he gets nineteen high-fives and one wide-eyed “You’re _really_ good, Mr. Co-Presidente”, it feels a bit more like winning.

Raúl finds Guti on the touchline after everyone leaves and slings an arm around his shoulder, pulling him in. They stay like that for a while.

 

 

 

 

Guti pulls up in front of his house on Monday morning. Raúl opens the passenger door and is aurally assaulted by the sound of something, for lack of a better word, on the stereo.

“When did you suddenly get good taste in music?” Guti asks suspiciously.

Raúl spots the neon pink CD case lying empty and open on the dashboard and groans.

 

 

 

 

It shouldn’t work, but it does.

(end)

 

-

 

  
  
\+ [vamossss](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLyugkVufJm-SjFZgqwjh7P6yWxDZe0R_l) (a jesé-approved playlist)  


 


End file.
